


Squeeze

by 30xf



Series: 201 Days Of X Files [3]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 17:15:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4714034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/30xf/pseuds/30xf





	Squeeze

"I can't believe you're still going to live in that place after what happened there!" Melissa Scully exclaimed.

"Melissa, it's my home," Dana Scully said, taking a sip of her wine.

"But still, that guy attacked you there. He would have killed you," she argued.

Scully sighed, "I know that, but he didn't. I'm fine and I'm staying right where I am." The subject closed, Scully turned her attention back to her salad. She had already eaten all the sliced chicken breast from the top of it, and made it halfway through everything else. She hadn't been all that hungry to begin with, and talking about a man who had tried to kill her in order to eat her liver wasn't helping that.

Melissa had also gotten a salad with chicken on it, and she was nearly finished hers. "Maybe Ethan should move in with you," she suggested around a mouthful. 

Scully gained a new interest in her salad, quickly filling her mouth to put off responding.

"Have you two talked about that any more?" Melissa prodded.

She couldn't eat another bite, and she pushed her plate away. After draining her glass of wine, she took a deep breath and answered, "We broke up, actually."

Melissa nearly choked on her salad. "You what?" she asked, setting her fork down on her empty plate. 

"We broke up," Scully repeated, giving her sister a forced smile as she accepted their server's offer to refill her wine glass.

"When?"

"Two weeks ago," she answered, indicating the server, who was waiting patiently to find out if a refill was needed for Melissa as well.

She held out her glass to be topped up, barely nodding a thank you to the departing server, and stared at her sister, open mouthed. "Why didn't you say something sooner?"

Scully shrugged, "Did you want me to consult you before I dumped him?"

Melissa huffed, "Of course not, but you could have told me when we got here an hour ago. Or apparently two weeks ago when it happened."

"It's not the kind of thing you send out announcements for Melissa."

"No, but it's the kind of thing you tell your only sister about," she reasoned. 

Scully raised her eyebrows and threw her hands up a little in apology. "Sorry...I've been busy with work. Nearly getting killed in your own home comes with a lot of paperwork I've learned."

"That's not funny, Dana."

"I wasn't joking," she sighed as she busied herself stacking their discarded dishes for the passing server to grab. He returned a moment later with a dessert menu and left it without a word, apparently sensing the gravity of the conversation going on.

Now Melissa sighed, "Have you told mom and dad yet?" She grabbed the dessert menu and started giving it serious consideration.

"Are you kidding? I haven't even told them the whole story about what happened in my apartment with that Tooms guy."

"Why not?"

"Because dad would probably either make me quit my job, or make me move back in with them."

Melissa handed Scully the dessert menu. "You're probably right. So why did you two break up?"

Scully looked over the menu for show only. "A lot of reasons, I guess," was all she said at first.

Their server returned for dessert orders, and Melissa asked for a piece of chocolate cake, while Scully simply opted for a coffee. "It had to do with your job, didn't it?"

Scully looked around the restaurant casually. Internally she was hoping for a bomb to go off, or for someone to start choking, or some other big distraction to get her out of this conversation. "That's one of the reasons, yeah. I'll be away a lot, and Ethan wasn't dealing with that very well."

"And you don't deal well with guys who don't go along with your way."

"Gee, thanks Missy."

Melissa laughed, but was unapologetic. "You can't be completely blameless in this Dana, that much I know. Was he pressing you to get married again?"

Sighing into her hands, Scully rubbed first her face, and then her eyes, careful not to disturb the mascara she had applied hours ago. Her coffee and Melissa's cake arrived and she was grateful for the simple distraction of adding milk and stirring. "He was dropping hints about moving in together. My first case away, when I called him he asked why I never leave any of my stuff at his place."

Melissa looked at her with a mix of admiration and hatred only siblings could manage. Dana had always inspired devotion and deep feelings in men, while the men Melissa ended up with were more laid back and prone to disappearing on her. "Is that why you broke up with him?"

Scully took a generous gulp of her coffee, despite it's heat. She shifted in her seat, and crossed her arms over her chest. "A few weeks ago, I was away on a case with Mulder. When I got home and was unpacking, I found tampons I had packed because my period was due while we were gone. It was only then I realized it hadn't started."

Melissa sat enraptured by Scully's story, her mouth literally stalled around a piece of half-chewed cake.

"I didn't say anything to Ethan--to anyone, for that matter. I just kind of tried to forget about it at first."

"Are you on the pill?" Melissa asked, finally finishing the bite of cake in her mouth.

Scully nodded, "Yeah, and we use a condom every time. But I've been really busy and forgotten a pill here and there. And condoms aren't a hundred percent. And we'd been a little more...active, with missing each other and what not."

Melissa was regarding her younger sister much the same way a child watches a parent who's telling their favourite bed time story. Dana had always been fairly open with her when it came to her relationships. The physical part, anyways. Whether it came from being a doctor, or was just the way she was, sex was just bodies interacting to her. Sex, she would talk about. Melissa hadn't failed to notice, however, that Dana's feelings had not yet entered into this conversation about the demise of her nearly two year relationship.

Scully took a deep breath, "But anyways, it started to really worry me because I'm usually maybe a day late at the most, and at the point when I was six days late, I was ready to get a pregnancy test. So I got up that morning, went to get ready, and found that my period had finally started, thank God."

Melissa shook her head, setting her fork down. "You must have been terrified."

"I was already starting to plan out what to tell mom and dad."

"God, can you imagine?" Melissa laughed.

"Dad would have had a stroke. Then disowned me."

"Bullshit," she handed the remainder of her cake to Scully. She had finished the majority of it, and now only the wide end remained. It was the part that held the most icing, and that had always been Scully's favourite part. "You've always been daddy's little girl. He would have adjusted."

Scully rolled her eyes and deposited a fork full of icing into her mouth. "Well, the conversation never needs to happen, thankfully."

"What did Ethan say about all this?"

She refused to look up, focusing on dragging her fork through the icing, "I never told him."

"You never told him?" Melissa's voice raised in disbelief.

"Shhhh," Scully chided, looking around for a second to see if anyone was paying attention to them. "I didn't see the point in telling him, unless there was a reason to tell him, you know?"

"Not being alone in worrying would have been enough of a reason, Dana!"

Scully shrugged off the sentiment, licking more icing from the fork. "It got me thinking though...if I had been pregnant, I could see the rest of my life laid out for me as if it were already set in stone."

"And what was that?"

"You know...I would have had to leave the FBI; back to medicine. Ethan and I would have gotten married; had a couple more kids. Probably moved into a nice house a couple blocks away from mom and dad. Worked like crazy to send the kids to good schools. Had some grandchildren. Then just sat around getting bored of each other till one of us died."

Melissa was quiet for a moment, noting the similarities in what her sister had said and the lives of their parents. For her part, she had always seen their parents' marriage as a great love story. Her sister had apparently seen it as a jail sentence. "Jesus, Dana...you really know how to take the romance out of life."

Scully shook her head, "You don't get it, Missy...I don't love him," she stated simply.

Melissa looked as if she might cry. Of course that was it. That was the difference. When their parents talked about each other, you could feel the love between them. When Dana talked about Ethan, there was a fondness, but not a whole lot more.

"I love him," Scully corrected herself. "I'm not in love with him." She was starting to hope for the server to return. It was Saturday, and should be her day off, but she had promised to meet Mulder at the office to finish up the paper work from their last case. It was almost done, but then they had to compile their notes for Eugene Tooms' court case, to begin Monday morning. Noticing some disappointment in her sister's face, she continued, "I was in love with him at some point." She rested her elbow on the table and buried her face in her hand. "I'm sure I was," she added, almost to herself. 

"Anything else I can get you today?" the voice of their server came suddenly but gently out of nowhere. 

Dana straightened up, coming back to herself instantly, "Just the check, please," she smiled brightly. As soon as he departed again, her smiled faded. "Fuck," she sighed. "You remember when we were kids and we had a test we had failed, or something, and had to tell mom and dad?"

Melissa scoffed, "Dana, you never failed a test in your whole life."

Her shoulders slumped. She was trying to make a point and her sister wasn't helping at all. "Except the most basic one...about having a normal, human relationship, apparently."

"Look at it this way: would you rather tell them again that you were leaving medicine for the FBI, or tell them you broke up with Ethan?"

"Touche," Scully noted, brightening slightly. She accepted the leather folder the server handed directly to her, before quickly retreating behind the counter. 

Melissa grabbed the folder when Scully set it down to get out her wallet. "That's okay, Dana--I got this. Sounds like you could use a break after the last couple weeks you've had."

Dana smiled, "Thanks."

After fishing through her wallet and coming up with enough to cover the check with a fairly generous tip, she laid the money on the table with the receipt. "Did you notice he handed the bill right to you?" she asked.

"Yeah, was that weird? I asked for it, I guess."

"Yeah, I guess," Melissa mused as the two put on their coats. "Dana?"

"Mhmm?"

"You can sometimes retake tests, you know," she said mysteriously, sliding the receipt across the table before heading for the door.

Scully looked down and noticed handwriting at the top of the printed receipt. In a server's rushed scrawl was the name 'Steve', which Scully vaguely recalled seeing on their server's name tag, followed by some numbers that appeared to make up Steve's phone number. She looked towards the server's counter, where Steve was eyeing her. He gave her a shy smile, before turning to answer the phone. Scully barely smiled back, not sure she even remembered how to flirt with anyone other than Ethan. Aware of her sister's watchful gaze from the door, Scully pocketed the receipt and went to join her. In all likelihood, she'd never call Steve, but it was nice to know life would go on.


End file.
